Maria Álvares has a PhD in public policy from CIES-ISCTE and specialises in evaluation studies, education and training policies, early school leaving, and equal opportunities. She was a member of the Ministry of Education's II Educational Territories of Priority Intervention Programme (TEIP) (2008-2010) and coordinated the evaluation of the Lisbon Municipal Programme Secundário para Tod@s (2020/2023)". As a researcher and/or coordinator, she has participated in research and evaluation studies of policies and projects and has been a national expert in various international studies, such as Eurydice, Ecorys and CEDEFOP. She completed her PhD in Public Policy in 2020 with distinction and unanimously with the dissertation "Discourses of change: Equal Opportunities in 30 years of Educational Policies in Portugal". She is a guest lecturer at the Universidade Aberta, on the Master's Degree in Educational Administration and Management, and the author of a number of national and international publications, mainly in the areas of policy evaluation, education policies, deliberation and discourse analysis.